Show hidden files that remain hidden

In Appearance Files View, clearing the 2 buttons to reveal hidden files does not allow access to, for instance, C documents and settings, which has a padlock next to it, and others.

I had reinstalled the OS from within the machine and uninstalled any junk such as games etc. Have Avast free, super antispyware, Spybot, all of which find no threat Have run Kasperski one-time virus removal tool and; no threat. Running Winaso registry cleaner some time ago revealed 500 odd registry errors that were fixed and a subsequent run some time later revealed few problems. Running Winaso again yesterday discovered hundreds of errors again.

Kaspersky seemed to have trouble getting past; PE_Patch.Juba, and Googling suggests there may be something hidden in there.

This machine runs well enough but Firefox not responding, and slowness on internet activity are symptoms.

Do I have a virus?

Regards, DH.

Welcome to the forum.

The "Documents and settings" folder has been obsolete since Vista. You should be using the "Users" folder". The "Documents and settings" folder is just a link maintained for compatibility with old software. Windows Explorer will never give you access by this route no matter what you do.

The "System Volume information" folder has special protection, even from an admin account, and should not be accessed unless you really understand what you are doing.

Registry cleaners are more trouble than they are worth and should be avoided. The validity of the errors found is often questionable. Many will find errors after a clean install. Others will find many errors and supposedly correct them but after another scan it will find the same errors. They have numerous pother problems as well.

Thanks for the reply. After XP, I'm new to W7. Going via user There are lots of files I can't access: cookies, application data, temporary internet files, etc. Surely these files should be accessible.

This netbook was rescued from a young relation and was a mess. It has not been 100% even after reinstalling W7.

I accept that registry cleaners may not be perfect but have had predictable results on my XP PC and a W7 laptop using WinASO. Running it again on this after uninstalling Bing this morning it showed over 3000 registry errors. That can't be right.

I suspect that if these hidden files are supposed to be accessible along with other poor performance there is a problem.

Regards, David.

This netbook has no disc drive so I reinstalled W7 from the internal restore(?) partition. It seemed to be a full installation not a repair and the windows shown on your 'Clean install W7.....' were ones I went through in the process. I got the instructions from the web and the machine was certainly improved afterwards. It took a while to do and of course I can't remember the source.

Thanks,

David.